Darwin student presents research at seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event

2017 May 2

Carthage College held the seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event on Friday, April 28, 2017. Celebration of Scholars is a poster exhibition that features original research, scholarship, and creative work completed by Carthage students.

Sarah Schmidt of Darwin presented "The Characterization, Genome Annotation, and Analysis of the Gordonia Bacteriophage Kurt" at the event.

This is the project's abstract:

"We isolated, investigated, annotated, and characterized the Gordonia terrae infecting bacteriophage Kurt throughout the 2016-2017 school year. Kurt was isolated from a soil sample taken from the Carthage College campus in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. We first ran a variety of experiments to purify, characterize, and analyze almost 80 Gordonia terrae and Mycobacterium smegmatis infecting phages. Plaque morphology and phage morphology were determined for each of these phages using plaque assays and electron microscopy. After extracting DNA from these phages, Kurt's DNA was sent to be sequenced. Kurt is one of 15 members of the cluster CR group of Gordonia phages of which only three have been annotated and published. We have annotated the genome of Gordonia phage Kurt using multiple computer programs including DNAmaster and Phamerator and algorithms to better understand the functions of its gene products and unique properties. Our phage's proteins were compared to previously discovered protein functions to reveal Kurt's gene product functions. We are performing further laboratory and bioinformatic experiments to explore Kurt and other related Gordonia bacteriophages biology."